


Kiss Me Here, Again, Again

by pastelaliens



Category: Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Mo Dao Zu Shi, 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, M/M, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-08-01 02:51:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16276442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastelaliens/pseuds/pastelaliens
Summary: Back then, when he’d been shaken from sleep during his reflective punishment and told, ‘The Yiling Patriarch is dead!’ To be suddenly awake and alive in a world that no longer held Wei Wuxian— no pain had ever come close or ever will. Even screaming his throat raw, even plucking the strings of his guqin down to the bone, even holding a brand too close to the fire before burning its design into his own skin— nothing, nothing, nothing to the fracturing of his heart.And more than just loss, it had been regret.“Back then, back then,” Wei Wuxian echoes in a sigh, the sound of it cutting through the memory. “Be here with me instead, Lan Zhan.” It isn’t dismissive but instead kindly coaxing, a guiding path to the present they now share. Here is Wei Wuxian, bright eyes and curling corners of a smile and heart open wide. Here is Lan Wangji, gathering it all to him, holding it as close as he always wished he could with a selfishness learned in loneliness. Here are the both of them, falling to the bed in a knot of limbs that only gets more tangled when someone tries to pull them apart. Here are the both of them, laid bare both in body and in love. Each can see everything of the other now, not a shadow in sight.





	Kiss Me Here, Again, Again

When he wakes, it’s to the heaviness of darkness, the weight of latest night before the shift into slowly brightening morning. It is hours before he usually rises and he knows immediately why he’d been pulled from sleep: there is only cold and empty space where Wei Wuxian belongs warm and deep in dreams beside him.

The panicked fluttering of his heart when Wei Wuxian is gone from sight is not something that can be quickly unlearned. They are safe here in the Cloud Recesses, he knows, but after waiting so long, after being so long alone— if Wei Wuxian disappears again— if he once more meets his end while out of Lan Wangji’s reach—

The grace with which he stands from the bed betrays nothing of the chaos inside of him.

For every step he takes away from the bed they’d fallen asleep in together, limbs tangled, the press of a year of solitude settles onto his shoulders until, after thirteen paces, even walking is a labor. It’s familiar, so familiar, but unwelcome as it wasn’t before. Once, he’d been resigned to carrying the burden, to dragging his grief behind him like chains, but now he knows freedom from it. He’ll buckle under its return.

His search through the Cloud Recesses is almost mindless. He can only think—  _ is he gone? Has he left me again? Has he been taken from me? _ He remembers suddenly the calluses on each of his ten fingers; he’d played Inquiry to bleeding on the loneliest days, turning his graceful hands ugly when their palms are turned to the sky. With a tightening in his throat, he remembers that now he knows the way it feels for Wei Wuxian’s skin to pass underneath those scars.

The Cloud Recesses sleeps. All is silent except for the sounds of outside: whispering winds, singing insects, water rolling over rock. He knows every breeze and nighttime creature and turn of a stream and he could always find comfort in them when comfort could be found nowhere else— but not now. Even as the world calls to him, he passes deafly by, sleep still in his eyes and his heart beating against the walls of his throat making each breath a chore.

If only this were a dream— the same nightmare he’s had countless times before. But invisible to the eye, under his robes, is the one thing that anchors it in reality; his feet are bare, shoes forgotten where they’d been waiting on the step. Not a hair is out of place otherwise, but the tender flesh of his soles will be bruised come tomorrow from the stones that pass under his feet without his realizing.

The surface of the cold spring is not the clear, undisturbed glass it should be in the small hours. Ripples distort the reflection of the trees overhead, of the mirror image of the bright moon hanging above in the sky. And there, in the middle where the water is deepest, is a body. Lan Wangji calls out, "Wei Ying?" but his voice is small, tight, shivering in the cold of fear. That's the face he'd missed upon waking but it's sapped of color, pale as the moon overhead. It's the face of a ghost.

Lan Wangji steps forward. The hem of his long robes swirls in the water. "Wei Ying?" he calls again, louder this time. That he's knee deep in the spring goes unnoticed. All he can think is—  _ go to him _ . Wei Wuxian's eyes are closed and his long hair is a black cloud, a dark halo around the white of his face. White like paper. White like the dead. Panicked, now: "Wei Ying!"

Suddenly, fluttering lashes, brows drawn together, eyes going wide. "Lan Zhan!" Wei Wuxian finds his feet underneath him to stand and pushes through the water toward him. Lan Wangji's breath is an avalanche in his throat, pulling too fast from his lungs, and he reaches out until there's a solid body underneath his hand. The broken sound of relief is the last tumbling boulder and the crash of Wei Wuxian pressed hard to Lan Wangji's chest is the settling of the landslide. In that embrace, he trembles.

"Lan Zhan, what's this? You're— your clothes! You just walked in with them on?" Wei Wuxian's body is bare, his own clothes abandoned on the shore in a crumpled pile. For this, Lan Wangji is grateful; he can feel the warm skin beneath his palms that means Wei Wuxian is a living, breathing human. It was only the moonlight robbing him of the petal pinks that are usually in his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose.

Wei Wuxian must sense something in the tension of Lan Wangji's body because he stays still in those arms holding him too tightly, even wraps his own around Lan Wangji's waist, hands tangling in the drifting robes. But after a moment, he mutters, "You're shaking. Is it too cold? Let's get out of the water." Lan Wangji allows himself to be led from the spring, his hand clinging fast to Wei Wuxian's, and his clothing hangs heavy and dripping from his body when his feet are again on dry ground. Immediately, Wei Wuxian's touch is there, plucking at the sopping cloth, pulling at knots, dragging arms out of sleeves. There's a frown between his brows and he keeps stealing glances up at Lan Wangji who can only stare in return.

When his clothes are gone and wrung of moisture, Wei Wuxian carefully dresses him in a robe of a darker color and too small in the shoulders, pulling taut over the broadness of him. Wearing just his underclothes, Wei Wuxian grimaces at his handiwork, pulling at the collar of the robe, fingertips dragging over the brand on Lan Wangji's chest. "If you were coming in, you should have undressed," he says through a pout, scolding. There's something almost nervous in him at the silence he receives as reply.

Lan Wangji doesn't trust himself to speak. His body is in conflict, caught between the numbing panic that had led him here and the shock of the chill water he'd waded into without thinking. For now, he only lifts a hand, slides it along the line of Wei Wuxian's jaw, drags the pad of his thumb over a high cheekbone. And Wei Wuxian's fingers slide over the back of that same hand, understanding coming slowly to his searching gaze.

Quietly, he says, "Tell me later, when you're warm again." Teeth clenched to aching, Lan Wangji can only nod once, short, stark in contrast to the tender touch that remains on Wei Wuxian's face.

Cautiously, Wei Wuxian takes a step backwards, and Lan Wangji, hand still gently cupping the curve of that cheek, takes a mirrored step forward. It’s like this they begin to make their slow way back to the room they share, Lan Wangji being led as though the servile dead, as though Chenqing hangs from Wei Wuxian’s fingers, a melody they both know trilling sweetly from it. But Lan Wangji needs no song to command him in devotion; he has always been willing to follow Wei Wuxian to every last corner of the earth, no matter the dangerous path. 

But it’s to safety they retreat now, to familiar four walls and pillows that smell like them. Such care in so careless a man as Wei Wuxian scrubs dry the long curtain of Lan Wangji’s hair, chases away any clinging beads of moisture desperate to remain on his skin. Clothes are abandoned, ill-fitting or not, and the bed is stripped of its down blanket which now billows like a cape over Lan Wangji’s shoulders. Wei Wuxian pulls the ends taut, wraps Lan Wangji up tight, but he shrugs it open again only seconds later.

Mild irritation in the smallest twitch of an eyebrow; Wei Wuxian stubbornly pulls it closed again. “Keep it on! It’s a cold night.” 

Again, the blanket falls open. This time, Lan Wangji holds his arms out, finds his voice, says, “Come here.” His arms close again only when Wei Wuxian is pressed against him, their skin immediately warming at the contact. This touch is enough to chase away any chill, even one that goes as deep as his bones, even the coldness of thirteen winters passed in solitude. Lan Wangji takes in a breath that rattles in his lungs at the beginning— but the longer he stays like this, cheek pressed to Wei Wuxian’s head, the steadier his breathing becomes.

But they’ve always been stronger together, the two of them.

Wei Wuxian stretches taller, brushes a kiss to the underside of Lan Wangji’s chin and another to his jaw and another to the soft skin just below his ear. “What happened?” he asks in a voice so quiet it gives Lan Wangji the option of pretending not to hear. Those lips wander away, idle by a collarbone and come to rest against the column of Lan Wangji’s throat. 

When before, in another life, Lan Wangji was dishonest by silence, now there are no secrets between them. “You were gone when I woke,” he says, and he wonders if Wei Wuxian can feel the words more than hear them, with his mouth where it is. “It reminded me of back then.”

No more explanation than that is needed.  _ Back then _ , when he’d been shaken from sleep during his reflective punishment and told,  _ ‘The Yiling Patriarch is dead!’  _ To be suddenly awake and alive in a world that no longer held Wei Wuxian— no pain had ever come close or ever will. Even screaming his throat raw, even plucking the strings of his guqin down to the bone, even holding a brand too close to the fire before burning its design into his own skin— nothing, nothing, nothing to the fracturing of his heart.

And more than just loss, it had been  _ regret _ . 

“Back then, back then,” Wei Wuxian echoes in a sigh, the sound of it cutting through the memory. “Be here with me instead, Lan Zhan.” It isn’t dismissive but instead kindly coaxing, a guiding path to the present they now share. Here is Wei Wuxian, bright eyes and curling corners of a smile and heart open wide. Here is Lan Wangji, gathering it all to him, holding it as close as he always wished he could with a selfishness learned in loneliness. Here are the both of them, falling to the bed in a knot of limbs that only gets more tangled when someone tries to pull them apart. Here are the both of them, laid bare both in body and in love. Each can see everything of the other now, not a shadow in sight.

In the light, Lan Wangji presses a kiss to that waiting forehead but before it can linger, Wei Wuxian lifts his head, lets the kiss move to his nose and further down to lips parted and waiting. “Kiss me here,” he says, always with that turn of mischief in his voice. Lan Wangji does as requested, quick and chaste. The whine he gets in return is exactly as expected but no less delightful for it. “Again.” This time, it does linger, but not long enough. There’s a plea in the word, “Again,” that isn’t spoken, that’s instead in the breath colliding with Lan Wangji’s own. 

This time, he bears down. He kisses deeply, closes his eyes to the sharp gasp that gets caught in Wei Wuxian’s throat. This time, he kisses him not as though Wei Wuxian is something he might lose, something he’s desperate to hold onto even as he turns to sand falling through the space between his fingers, but as though he’s something he means to keep forever. After a long moment, Lan Wangji breaks away, but he doesn’t go far; he likes to stay close enough to see the way Wei Wuxian’s eyes flutter open, kiss-dazed.

“What else?” Lan Wangji asks. If Wei Wuxian gives him orders, he’ll follow diligently each and every one.  _ Kiss me here. Again. Again.  _ That distant gaze comes back to earth, sharpens and drops to the mouth Lan Wangji offers. His eyes are fixed on it even as he turns his head, bares the long line of his neck, lifts a hand to touch where his pulse jumps. 

“Here,” Wei Wuxian says quietly. Lan Wangji leans down, warms the skin on his exhale, tastes the very beating of his heart. Lower down, a touch to his collarbone. “Here.” Lan Wangji obeys. Lower yet, a peaked nipple. “Here.” This time Lan Wangji meets Wei Wuxian’s stare as his mouth descends and his lips press and his tongue follows. He begins to pull away— but fingers in his hair, nails dragging gently through it, halts him. Through labored breathing, Wei Wuxian whispers, “Teeth.”

A groan so quiet Wei Wuxian might not have noticed it but for the vibration of it against his skin. Lan Wangji’s splayed hand starts heavy along the curve of his ribs and slides up, up, settles at the base of his throat and  _ presses _ , holds Wei Wuxian still where he lays, so that when he does bare his teeth and do as asked of him, Wei Wuxian can’t writhe away from it. Even here, in one of the most beautiful places in the world, Lan Wangji’s never seen anything prettier than all the curves of him when his back arches. 

Every wrinkle he leaves in the blanket, every stuttered exhale he lets through parted lips, every encouraging tug of his fingers in his hair reminds Lan Wangji that Wei Wuxian is here and his, chasing away the nightmare of not having him, helping him forget the panic of relearning a life with so big an absence it was half of one. His gratitude is endless and it’s like this he can only begin to show him the breadth of it: “What else?” he asks again, leaving behind flesh flushed with attention and wet from his mouth. 

Wei Wuxian lifts his arm, bends it at the elbow and covers his face, though the pink in his cheeks still peeks out. But Lan Wangji wants those eyes, wants the heated look of them, so he takes Wei Wuxian by the wrist and pins it to the bed beneath them. He repeats, “What else?” and holds himself above, the only contact between them now that grip on his arm. Wei Wuxian strains— against Lan Wangji’s strength and toward the body that was only seconds ago covering his own. He begins to reach out but only one warning glance toward the movement from Lan Wangji has the hand dropping again, clenching into a fist. 

Then, quietly, softer than a whisper, he answers, “Everywhere.” 

The restraining touch on Wei Wuxian’s wrist turns tender and he pulls the hand toward him, presses a slow kiss to the tip of every finger. He is reverent. He holds the hand and kisses the soft skin over delicate bones as though there’s nothing more precious to him in the whole of the earth. And there isn’t. 

Precious is the long flat of his arm, the peak of his shoulder, the valley at the center of his chest. Precious is the uneven expanse of his stomach and the way it tightens under the drag of his lips. Precious are the legs that fall open at the first brush of his mouth against the length of him— and even more so the disbelieving laugh when Lan Wangji moves instead to the smooth skin on the inside of his thigh and further down to the crook of his knee and furthest to the top of his foot. And there Lan Wangji sits, on his own knees between Wei Wuxian’s legs as if bowing at the altar of him. His heart aches to see that dark head thrown back against the pillow, life in the color of his skin and in the brightness of the gaze that looks for what comes next. He welcomes the painful throb of it. 

“Are you only going to look, Lan Zhan?” Perhaps he means it to be teasing but the tone of his voice— strained, pulled taut— gives away his impatience, his need for Lan Wangji’s touch. A tempting thought, to make him wait for it, but he doesn’t have the strength himself right now for restraint. His answer, then, is the quick work of turning him onto his stomach, which earns him a satisfying yelp. A hand on each ankle, fingertips pressing, before they begin gliding up over his calves and then his thighs and then the thicker flesh higher still. They halt at the hips, grip tightening, and that’s where Lan Wangji leans all of his weight, Wei Wuxian’s body sinking further into the down blanket trapped beneath them. Slowly, slowly he lowers his own body so that Wei Wuxian can feel each gradual inch of contact, until the two long lines of them are indistinguishable from one another. 

Wei Wuxian fits into every last contour of him. 

But he doesn’t settle there. He only stays long enough to continue his kisses, first to the space behind Wei Wuxian’s ear, and then the crook of his neck and the back of it, one shoulder blade and then the second. His tongue he dips into the grooves of Wei Wuxian’s spine, right down to the small of his back— and then he takes in his two hands the rounded curves of him, spreads him wide, lowers his head to press the flat of his tongue against the most intimate part of him. The sound that follows can only be described as a  _ whimper _ ; it disappears into the pillow where Wei Wuxian buries his face.

Muscles pull tight and soon Wei Wuxian is pushing back against that mouth, inviting the exploring tongue. Suddenly there’s a hand in Lan Wangji’s hair once more, pressing him closer, and he’s grateful— for the contact, yes, but mostly for the position that now allows him to hear every last gasp and long moan he draws from Wei Wuxian. There are moments he treasures: a smile here, laughter there, a confession, things more heated— and each of them replaces in his memory a moment he spent alone or in pain. Here is another moment: Wei Wuxian’s fingers shifting, sliding along Lan Wangji’s jaw when he draws back, two pairs of eyes meeting, the same feelings mirrored in both sets. 

Lan Wangji leans up and presses a kiss to Wei Wuxian’s temple before disappearing briefly from the bed, returning with a glass bottle in hand. A shuddering breath escapes Wei Wuxian at the sight and he lifts himself up onto his knees, chest and shoulders still pressed flat to the mattress. There’s a fluttering low in Lan Wangji’s stomach— will he never shake those few seconds of disbelief whenever Wei Wuxian offers himself to him this way? 

The bottle falls atop the blanket with a dull noise and Lan Wangji comes away from it with fingers slickened. With one hand he traces the line of Wei Wuxian’s spine from the top of it to the base, palm pressing; the other has a more serious task, one finger beginning to coax that body open. Lan Wangji is slow. He is thorough. He is careful as with most things. And just as Lan Wangji is himself, so too is Wei Wuxian— impatient, reckless, asking for too much too soon in words that tumble rapidly from him: “Please, I want you— need you— inside—” 

Two fingers. Slower still. Wei Wuxian’s thighs tremble under those steady hands. When pleas don’t work, he tries a name, each different whimper and whine and moan of it more desperate than the last. “Lan Zhan.  _ Lan Zhan. _ ” It earns him a third. Wei Wuxian rocks back on his knees,  _ rides _ the fingers preparing him, the movement robbing Lan Wangji of all the breath in his lungs. When finally he’s satisfied, he pulls back, reaches for the bottle again— but Wei Wuxian beats him to it, snatching it from under his extended hand. 

He’s kneeling now, having lifted his upper half from the bed, and it’s with shaking fingers he unstops the bottle and pours oil into the cup of his palm. Wei Wuxian looks over his shoulder, captures Lan Wangji’s gaze with his own— and then takes the yet untouched length of him into his hand. The first few strokes bows his back, his eyes closing and his forehead lowering to Wei Wuxian’s shoulder, his teeth baring to the vulnerable skin underneath them and leaving their mark. And then that grip guides him forward, presses him to the place he’d so carefully prepared, and he slips inside. Their gasps are a chorus.

There are desperate fingers in his hair pulling him toward Wei Wuxian’s waiting mouth and parted lips that press to his in barely a kiss for all the words that get in the way. Even breathless and needy, Wei Wuxian sings his praises, a refrain he knows well but will never tire of. He’s lost in the rhythm of it, sliding his arm around Wei Wuxian’s chest and holding him flush to his own body, so close, never close enough even in this dance that joins them. And when he moves, it’s to the stuttering melody of Wei Wuxian’s moans in their endless, musical stream. 

This is the feeling Lan Wangji must remember even when he can’t hold him. Gone from sight doesn’t mean gone from this world— a world that knows peace, even if it is brief as peace usually is, in some small part because of them. And would the world be so cruel as to take Wei Wuxian from the one who loves him a second time? This is what they’re owed. This is what they deserve. Underneath his palm pressed flat, he can feel Wei Wuxian’s heart beating strong, so full of life. And there’s more of the same in the rest of him: the head thrown back and the neck stretched, the fingernails leaving behind crescent moons in the skin beneath them, the hips that push back to meet him every time he rolls his own forward. 

Life, too, in the sounds pulled from his throat. Lan Wangji wraps his other arm around him, hand dragging up and up until his fingers curl loosely around Wei Wuxian’s neck where he can feel the slow crawl of each moan as it makes its way up to those parted, panting lips. He follows one of them, fingertips gliding over the line of that neck, up to the mouth that takes them eagerly. The press of Wei Wuxian’s tongue, the heat of it coaxes a groan from Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian blooms under the rare sound, bends to it, begs for more. 

What he gets, instead, is a low voice in his ear. “Touch yourself,” it says, and the whimper Lan Wangji can feel around his fingers tightens something inside of him. He pulls them away, covers Wei Wuxian’s hand with his own and guides it to hold the hot, firm length of him. Each stroke earns a snap of Lan Wangji’s hips and Wei Wuxian learns it quickly, his hand moving faster, faster, and his body might have pitched forward were it not for the arm still wrapped tightly around him, keeping him upright. 

There’s a sudden, clawed grip on his thigh, fingernails biting into the skin. “Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian calls, warning, gasping. Lan Wangji can feel his every muscle pulling taut, a string stretched to its limit and ready to snap with a dissonant sound. 

“Not yet.” 

The trembling starts. Wei Wuxian tries to stop the stroking of his hand but Lan Wangji’s is still there, fingers closing tighter. He tries to pull back from the touch but it only pushes him into the body behind him, into the press of those hips which is no escape from the building, mounting pleasure he’s trying to avoid. The nails on Lan Wangji’s thigh dig deeper, break the skin, but pain is secondary to this, the way Wei Wuxian comes apart against him. His name again, louder, fractured: “ _ Lan Zhan _ !” 

Lan Wangji’s teeth drag against the soft flesh of Wei Wuxian’s ear. “Not yet,” he says again, voice firm. This time, he’s merciful and stops their two hands at the base of him— but his mercy only goes so far. Still, the relentless thrust of his hips. Still, teeth finding vulnerable flesh and leaving their mark, the tongue that follows scant relief from the sharp pain that only pushes Wei Wuxian closer and closer. To keep him suspended in this moment forever, right at the peak— to remain forever here inside of him, as close to him as he can be— but forever, at least in this, is too long, though they do have forever to come here again, and again, and again.

He whispers, “Wei Ying,” prompting him. The response is immediate, tumbling desperate from his lips.

“Please, Lan Zhan. I love you. Please, may I—? I need— I need—” Lan Wangji shifts his hand to Wei Wuxian’s chin, turns his head so he can lean forward and meet that pleading gaze. 

Their lips brush, the barest touch. “Good,” comes his gentle praise. The word steals all the breath from Wei Wuxian’s lungs. And then: “Now.” 

Wei Wuxian shudders to pieces there in his arms, every last broken moan crashing against his lips. He’s never looked more beautiful than this— eyes bright and cheeks flushed and body bending. Never a song so beautiful from that throat. Never a moment in which Lan Wangji has loved him better. And every second from here, one after the other, loving him more and more and more, limitless.

For a long moment, they are still. Wei Wuxian’s heart beats breakneck against the arm Lan Wangji has pressed to his chest— and that same arm is the only thing keeping him from slumping boneless to the bed, muscles twitching and useless. His head tilts back, eyes closed, and Lan Wangji turns enough to brush his lips over that dewed forehead in a kiss so tender. “Good,” he says again, his voice soft but filled to brimming with everything he feels for the one he holds. 

Once recovered, that sated body is put to action; Wei Wuxian pulls away and Lan Wangji, briefly stunned at the loss of him, lets loose the grip that hold him close. Still, he doesn’t go far; he lays down and rolls onto his back the best he can for all the weakness in his limbs. “Like this,” he whispers, the voice from his raw throat hoarse. “I want to see you.” His arms reach and Lan Wangji lowers himself into them, obedient now that he’s gotten what he wanted in Wei Wuxian’s release. He slips a hand between their two bodies, takes himself into trembling fingers, finds once more that place of pleasure and sinks into it. Wei Wuxian’s legs wrap around him, the heels of both feet pressing against the small of his back and encouraging him to move.

But it’s the words dripping from those lips more than anything that spur him on. Words spoken low in his ear, into his open mouth, against his temple: “You feel so good—  _ Please, Lan Zhan _ — I want to see you come—  _ Inside _ —” The rhythm of his hips stutters and he gasps, his eyes fluttering shut. But there are hands in his hair, fingers that tighten, and Wei Wuxian’s voice sounds once more. “Open your eyes. Look at me. Let me see.” He does. He finds that gaze with his own and holds, holds, loses himself in the blue of them. And then, with a short sound, he falls over the edge. 

They catch their breath together, chests rising and falling against one another in time. Lan Wangji tries to draw back but the limbs wrapped around him are tight as a vice and refuse to let him go. “Stay this way for a while,” Wei Wuxian says, his speech slow, tired. With some defiance, Lan Wangji at least pulls out of him, which earns a whine of protest, but then he does settle on top of him, stealing a small kiss from that gentle smile.

“I need to clean you,” he says, between another pair of kisses. Wei Wuxian’s grin broadens, a lazy thing, a happy thing. Lan Wangji can’t stop pressing his lips to it.

“Later, later,” is the singsong reply. He’s so warm when he pulls Lan Wangji infinitesimally closer, as if this isn’t enough, the weight of him pressing him into the bed. “Do you love me, Lan Zhan?”

After all this, after everything, it isn’t even a question, but Lan Wangji will humor it anyway. “I do,” he promises. “I love you.” Wei Wuxian’s noise of contentment constricts his heart in that singular way, in a way nothing else ever has or ever will. The sounds of the outside world come back to him now that he’s not hanging on every last gasp, every last whispered word, and the slow broadening of his awareness brings with it the joy that here, in the small part of this earth he inhabits, within the circle of his arms exists a whole world in itself that’s only him, Wei Wuxian, and the enormity of the feelings they have for one another. 

How lucky he is. 

Wei Wuxian echoes, as if pulling the thought from Lan Wangji’s mind, “I really feel lucky… being here with you,” and it’s in that off-handed tone he has, though it’s no less sincere for it. 

The way he’s sunk into the blankets surrounding them, the way his breathing has evened and slowed, Lan Wangji knows Wei Wuxian is close to sleep. Before he disappears into it, he asks in a whisper, “Are you ever afraid… of losing me?” 

When the answer comes, it’s as if from somewhere far off. “Mm? No, no,” he says, turning his face to bury it into the crook of Lan Wangji’s neck. “We always find each other… no matter how far we go.” A steady hand lifts, the palm of it carefully cradling the back of Wei Wuxian’s head, holding it in place as he drifts into dreams. Lan Wangji shifts only enough to settle his weight beside him, keeping their two bodies close, and as the sun rises in the sky, he takes no notice of it— his sun is already there, the face delicate in sleep and lighting everything around it. And the shadow of fear that one day he might open his eyes and the world will be dark with the loss of him pales until it disappears in all the brightness. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! ♥ feel free to follow me on twit @paybackisawitch and cry abt mdzs with me


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